What's My Tribe?

I have been feeling beside myself,
unhooked from humanity, in need
of that sense of belonging.
Came to this exhibition
- Wildlife photography -
looking for something beyond
the visual experience, a re-wilding,
a pinning back to fear, focus, flight.

The perfect brown balloons
of that bird’s eyes follow me
I’m being stalked by my lost tribe.

Listen intently for the trigger
that must sound for us all,
start the sardine run, stampede,
salmon swarm, spawn, commute
that massing, pressure building inside,
erupting, surging, spilling out
into a connection, a moving column
of the same, yet distinct, beings
possessed by a need
that has no name.

And here I am again,
in the herd, returning.